SAULT STE. MARIE, Ont.—Heather Graham, costumed in a skin-tight floral dress and cherry-coloured stilettos, is whipping up chocolate soufflés under the watchful eye of fellow actor Joe Mantegna. What would the workers at D.D.I. Seamless Cylinder make of their former workplace?

As L.A. film publicist Steven Zeller put it as he opened the door to what was once a fire extinguisher parts manufacturer on the outskirts of Sault Ste. Marie: “Welcome to Hollywood north-north.”

The empty factory became a sound stage in May for darkly comic thriller Compulsion and temporary home to a pair of elaborate New York City apartment sets inhabited by obsessive-compulsives played by Boogie Nights star Graham (who fancies herself a TV chef) and The Matrix’s Carrie-Anne Moss, whose character is an emaciated, bitter former child star. The film is a remake of South Korean director Cheol-su Park’s 301, 302.

On one apartment kitchen set, crew members move a camera along track laid down to the specifications of 82-year-old Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) while Graham and Mantegna rehearse their lines.

Soo-born director Egidio Coccimiglio, who left the city 675 kilometres northwest of Toronto to study film at Ryerson University in the 1980s and now lives in L.A., describes it as “an Odyssian journey” for him to be back in his hometown three decades later to shoot Compulsion, to say nothing of making it with such a legendary cinematographer.

“When I was in Grade 9, I asked to get some direction on where I could study film. People didn’t know what filmmaking was. I was met with a lot of blank stares,” Coccimiglio explained during a break from lensing his new movie.

“To go away and then find myself back in this particular production was surreal to say the least.”

Northern Ontario residents are getting used to seeing movie stars around town and feeling the benefits of film production staff spending their pay in restaurants and hotels, thanks to a generous layering of tax credits for hiring local crews and businesses. It’s part of a complex network of repayable government loans and financial incentives to encourage production both in Ontario and also the north.

Since 2004, the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corp., an agency of the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, has invested more than $25 million from Parry Sound north to attract film production there. Diversification is the reason behind the push, aimed at helping Northern Ontario ease its reliance on natural resource-based sectors while making up for revenues lost with industrial downsizing and closures.

Producer Bill Marks (Casino Jack) has spent so much time shooting in Sault Ste. Marie lately, he bought a house there two months ago. Not only does he have Compulsion opening next year, he also produced The Truth, starring Andy Garcia, Eva Longoria and Forest Whitaker; The Story of Luke, with Seth Green and Cary Elwes; and Collaborator, starring David Morse, Martin Donovan and Olivia Williams. All were shot in the Soo.

Marks explained the march north followed in the wake of 9/11 and the 2003 SARS crisis, which sent already-booked Toronto productions to cities like Winnipeg or Halifax at the last minute. Filmmakers realized they could work well outside Toronto when it came to smaller-budget movies and those that didn’t need urban settings for locations.

Since 2009, the area north of the GTA has been especially busy, with Oliver Sherman and the Kids in the Hall’s Death Comes to Town shooting in North Bay — plus The Colony starring Laurence Fishburne, the first movie made in the city’s now-shuttered NORAD bunker. Edwin Boyd: Citizen Gangster, The Story of Luke and Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang — a remake of the 1996 film that was among Angelina Jolie’s early roles — were shot in Sault Ste. Marie, while A Little Bit Zombie, The Truth and The Lesser Blessed were filmed in Sudbury, to name a few.

But why would Hollywood head outside the GTA?

“It’s like my favourite line from The Right Stuff,” Marks said with a grin as he sat at a lunch table tucked off to one side of the set. “‘You know what makes this bird fly? It’s not rocket fuel, it’s not your technology. It’s funding, my friend.’”

But one incentive can’t be measured in dollars: the quality of crews and availability of support services in communities that bend over backwards to welcome film production.

“For Ontario, it is the combination of all the things we bring to the table,” said Donna Zuchlinski, Ontario film manager with the Ontario Media Development Corp.. The province boasted a record year in 2011, with $1.3 billion spent on production — a 10 per cent hike over its previous best year.

“We have great crews, infrastructure, cast and crew. It gives a producer a comfort level that everything they need can be found here and that they can really maximize their tax credit, (which is) based on what you spend in the province,” she said.

“We are growing the industry,” agreed Melanie Muncaster, Sault Ste. Marie-based manager of program services for the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corp. “We’re seeing a crew base, post-production companies starting to emerge, rather than shipping people up from Toronto or Detroit, employing people in sectors that never employed them before.”

A certain leap of faith is also required to change from “this little steel town,” as Compulsion director Coccimiglio calls it with fondness in his voice, to a filmmakers’ hub.

Changes are coming, if slowly. The shuttered businesses on the Soo’s main drag tell one story. But so do the busy restaurants, the hundred or so extras who get work on movies and the spillover benefits, like crews learning on the job or the students in the Sault College culinary programs who were given jobs as food stylists on Compulsion.

Rosalie Chilelli is such a believer. She quit her government post at the Sault Ste. Marie Economic Development Corp. to start her own film production co-ordination business, Edge Enterprises.

“It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out there’s (government) money on the table and why aren’t we getting part of this industry?” Chilelli said over a pad Thai lunch at a hip downtown restaurant on the Soo’s main street.

She points out that, according to FedNor, the government of Canada’s regional development organization for Northern Ontario, for every dollar spent on production in Ontario’s north, $1.55 stays in the community. She estimates the $1.5 million spent on Compulsion means $2.32 million to the Soo.

“The return on investment is extraordinary,” Chilelli noted, adding in-kind investment from the city on a movie only comes once a production is nailed down.

“The return on investment is $8-or-9 million,” she added of the recent group of films to be made in Sault Ste. Marie. “Your risk is zero. You have an industry that has a zero risk.”

Inspired by how well Sudbury was luring productions — the city is also refitting a hockey arena to serve as a sound stage — Chilelli started her company to help producers with every aspect of putting a film together in the Soo, from sourcing local costumers, hair and makeup artists, to local casting, to finding just the right location for a scene.

In addition to Compulsion, Chilelli’s latest film work was on Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang, directed by Cannes Palme d’Or winner Laurent Cantet (The Class). Based on the novel by Joyce Carol Oates, Sault Ste. Marie stands in for upstate New York, circa 1950. The film will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September.

“For Foxfire alone I put through 300 background actors. Half of them were young people. There were 150 for Edwin Boyd,” said Chilelli, adding she’s not the only local who is making film work a career.

“We are already benefitting in so many ways,” she said. “People are renting lock-up services, hiring caterers, their per diems are spent at these restaurants and shoe stores and clothing stores.

“We’re enthusiastic and our locations are prime for anything in the 1950s, not to mention our natural landscapes, and we have empty warehouse space we can use as studio.”

As Coccimiglio pointed out, this brings not only a new industry to the north, but a chance for young people to participate in it by getting on-set experience and ACTRA credits that lead to union membership.

“The prospects for someone getting on a plane and going to Los Angeles are pretty slim,” he said. “Where does a person get that exposure? How does it happen? This is how it happens.”

Lise Lalonde, film outreach officer with Sudbury’s non-profit arts industry promoter Music and Film in Motion, echoes Coccimiglio.

“I didn’t for a second believe I could continue a career in TV and film in Sudbury,” said Lalonde of when she moved there from Montreal, where she had been working as a production manager and line producer.

She was delighted to be proved wrong. A pair of French-language TV series for TFO, Météo+ and Les Bleus de Ramville, keep local crews busy in between film work, while TVO’s Hard Rock Medical, a Canadian-Australian co-production drama shooting in Sudbury, starts airing in 2013.

“Six other features are looking to shoot in Sudbury between now and Sept. 1,” added Lalonde, who believes about 100 locals make their living in filmmaking and related work.

She credits Men with Brooms, the 2002 curling comedy starring Paul Gross and partially shot in Sudbury, with kicking off the film industry there, which really took off in 2007.

“The major issue is there’s a certain budget level that has been really difficult to find locations for,” said Lalonde. While Sudbury can’t offer “luxury condos” for locations, “we’ve got plenty of woods and plenty of cabins.” And Parry Sound is always happy to provide “that cottage country look.”

And don’t count out Ontario’s farther north. Peter Politis, mayor of the town of Cochrane (population 5,340), 90 kilometres north of Timmins, wants to get in on the action. He’s eyeing a piece of that $1.3 billion pie Ontario reaped from production last year. In fact, he’s pitching the District of Cochrane as the new Alaska — from a Hollywood perspective.

“If Alaska can do it, we can do it,” said Politis, adding the district has opened a film office and recently broke ground on DC VIP Studios, a collection of 20 micro studios.

The District of Cochrane has already landed its first TV series, DC Loggers, a 13-episode show following family business Genier Bros. Trucking Ltd. Production started in June and shooting will take place in and around several Cochrane communities, including Kapuskasing — hometown of another familiar movie name, Avatar’s James Cameron.

“We’re not experts. This is completely new for us,” said Politis who believes local TV and film production could top $100 million a year for his district. “It’s completely new cash. We can diversify and expose to the world who we really are: the greatest way of life in the best backyard on the planet.”

Will Hollywood spoil the little town “at the end of Yonge St.,” as Politis calls Cochrane?

“I wonder if Cochrane will spoil Hollywood,” he quips.

Lights, camera, northern action!

Some highlights of Ontario’s northland onscreen in productions shot from 2009 to present.

More on thestar.com

We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.